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A collection

July 28, 2014

I am thrilled that between the two of us, my mother and I seem to have found a good home for my dad’s extensive classical music CD collection. He developed the collection in part as a result of his reviewing CDs for the American Record Guide.

I felt pretty strongly that the collection has greater value as a whole, that its value as a whole is greater than the sum of its (many) parts. One example of the significance of its size is how it contains multiple performances of the same work (my dad would make reference to comparisons in his reviews) and so lends itself to in-depth study of a work. I advocated pretty strongly that we should find someone to take it who would appreciate this aspect of it.

I did some poking about online while I was on the telephone with my mother, and I gave her some phone numbers of music departments or related departments at local universities.

The collection is going to a university library, as I understand it, and being handled by a person who really appreciates the collection (and even used to follow my father’s work). As I said, I am thrilled.

I was going to write more about the factual details of what’s going on, but what really moved me was finding such a good match. I wound up my father’s estate recently, and I certainly tried to do right by him on those matters, but this is a different sort of thing — it feels like settling something of the heart. I think it makes me feel as though there are things we can still do for loved ones after they have died.

2 Responses to “A collection”

Thank you for your appreciation. There are benefits from more anonymous giving, too (maybe because energy doesn’t get siphoned off that way?). But it’s a nice thought you have — my dad would have appreciated it, I’m sure.